Since L. Frank Baum’s book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was published in 1900, “Oz” has been an integral part of American culture in the 20th century. It started as the original American fairy tale with supposed political allegories and transformed into the first uncut Hollywood film broadcasted as a single television event. While Baum wrote 13 more books in the series, the first has been in the public domain since 1956 – This is where “Wicked” comes in.

Creators Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman have shrewdly followed the tradition of refashioning popular, pre-existing cultural icons into mainstream poppy hits. And with the flair and budget of Broadway brought right to our door, you have the opportunity to go on the classiest date known to man.

“Wicked” centers around the evil Wicked Witch, here given the name Elphaba (for the initials of L. Frank Baum).

The story revolves around the growing friendship of young Elphaba and Glinda. The future Wicked Witch of the West is a quiet outcast and Glinda is the white, queen-bee socialite. Elphaba is certainly the character to be identified with — she’s for outsiders.

Elphaba is played by Anne Brummel and is admittedly a little green. But that’s because she’s the Wicked Witch of the West, so you kind of expect that. Her casual brilliance hits full force during her performance of the song “No Good Deed.”

Glinda is played by Natalie Daradich, who plays the humanized self-absorbed social butterfly, an archetype that normally comes with the flatness of character intended to draw contempt. She gets all the good laughs and rightly deserves them.

Tom McGowan plays the Wizard, both a controlling dictator and delightful fraud in a Willy Wonka kind of tinge. He’s probably best known to audiences from his various TV roles, including Kenny, the station manager on “Frasier” and Steve Buscemi’s roommate in “Ghost World.”

The romantic interest to our ladies is Fiyero, played by David Nathan Perlow. His songs are few and difficult, but you can sense no sign of struggle as he blasts the roof off of Popejoy whenever he gets his chance.

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on Thursday, February 3rd, 2011 at 6:40 pm and is filed under Uncategorized.
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